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3 October 2016

What is your Agile journey? Where does it take you? This is mine, kind of!

I began learning about Agile when I was a developer. I was looking to find better ways of collaboration with the business and my team members. There was a point in time that I figured out I can't deliver great code on my own; I need to help others to do great things from coding to analysis and so forth. I tried some ideas, some worked, few didn't. Later on, I got introduced to Scrum framework. Scrum seemed easy and straightforward at the beginning. The more I read about and got myself into, I figured out it is deliberate to be silent about many issues. The rationale is that if you stick to the values of Scrum, you can figure out what to do in a situation by situation basis (it can be very hard though).

I then started helping teams to adopt Scrum and then at the organisation level. The more I got myself into these kinds of challenges, I noticed that I need to educate myself more and become more knowledgeable; so that I can more efficiently help other people. I have attended several pieces of training listed as Certified Scrum Master, Kanban, ICAgile Certified Professional, Coaching Agile Teams, Certified Disciplined Agilist, ICAgile Facilitation For Agile Teams, Certified LeSS practitioner & Lean Change Agent. I have also been to many community events such as coach retreats, coach camps, agile meetups and so on. On the side, I was reading many books and maintain a blog to share my learning with the community as well. Still, I am learning and try to implement unique techniques and skills to specific challenges. (You can take a look here for a list of books/blogs/articles/activities I enjoyed and favourited.)

I have helped one Telecommunication company to embrace Scrum. I helped their leaders to shift their mindset from faster delivery to a more effective and frequent delivery standpoint. On another engagement, I am helping a big financial institution with their Agile initiatives. I have helped several teams to adopt the Scrum framework. The adoption was helpful in surfacing up the fundamental issues that they have in order for the teams to be more effective. Thus leading to initiatives on how to effectively change the organization.

Although I have touch points with different concepts of Agile here and there before Scrum. I feel that Scrum was the official starting point of my Agile journey. It won't be the last point of my journey for sue, but I have the feeling that within this journey constantly I am going to refer back to Scrum and learn more and more about it.